Since an explanation would be good coming from another fellow regular community member, I will defend them a little here.
I think that’s a misunderstanding of the role of the mods/mavens. The mods and mavens are all good people. I like all of them. They make this a great environment and they are very helpful, especially when someone definitely needs something escalated because of a critical support situation beyond what normal support would do. They aren’t Wyze employees though. It is not their place to speak for or represent Wyze or try to tell Wyze what curiosity questions they should answer, particularly on something that they have absolutely no inside knowledge on, such as TUTK. They also rarely speak in threads that aren’t really productive, such as this one unless it is to moderate abuse of the guidelines. They give us a lot of freedom. Honestly as I understand it, their role is simply
- Answer general questions about products and services that they have experience or knowledge of (often they quote a source or direct people to the applicable FAQ’s, quotes, threads, etc., or sometimes give their experience or helpful educated personal opinion, or ideas).
- Direct the person to Support or somewhere else that can better help the person with getting their needs met (they do a ton of this)
- Help make sure the community guidelines are upheld (this encompasses many different options within it, including stopping abuse, but also harmless things like merging duplicate topics or explaining how to better use the forum, etc)
- Bring certain significant concerns to the attention of the applicable Wyze staff member, and let that person decide what they are going to do (Mods/Mavens can’t MAKE Wyze do anything).
- Be themselves and share and discuss their own preferences and opinions regardless of their title.
- Probably a bunch of other things I forgot or don’t even know about because I am not one myself, and so I don’t have any idea what kind of orientation or instructions or additional guidelines they receive from Wyze, but I am sure the idea in general is to do what they can to be as helpful as possible to community members, refer to the correct information, and save Wyze as much time as possible…and bring the absolute most important and critical things to Wyze’s attention. At least all that sounds logical to me with my business experience.
Basically Mods/Mavens are just community members just like us, but they are respected and trusted community members with a lot of experience and knowledge of Wyze who have proven their maturity and integrity patterns over a long period of time, and adherence to tests with NDA’s, etc. Wyze simply trusts them to help keep things organized and civil here while helping out things in a volunteer capacity. Wyze trusts they will bring important or critical things to Wyze’s attention, but leave Wyze to decide what to do about it. It’s not like Wyze is unaware of the TUTK issue and something they need to tell Wyze about. What are they going to say about TUTK? They’re not involved with programming the protocol or know SDK Wyze is using. They may or may not have informed Wyze someone wants an official answer about TUTK vulnerabilities, but if it was so important, why did none of us here or elsewhere or anywhere submit the all important question during any of the “Ask Me ANYTHING” events in the last 3 months while Wyze employees were willing to answer ANYTHING someone had a question about? That’s kind of our fault we let that opportunity slide, not the Mods or Mavens.
We will often find some of them make a comment or two somewhere in a thread like this, but afterward, what is the point in them all repeating themselves and each other? Some of them have told me that they actually read EVERY single post (I am not implying they all do this, but I do know that some of them do), but sometimes it takes them a while to catch up, so it can be helpful when people flag something to bring it to their attention sooner, or so that they’ll pay closer attention. I can almost guarantee you that they are following this thread very closely. Their lack of participation in this thread or the other one in no way means a lack of interest or paying attention. I can’t blame any who choose to ignore posts like this and instead spend most of their time on posts where they can be of more help (replying to people with support questions, etc), but if we’re not discussing products or how to use them, I bet several of them just see no point in actually participating even if/when they read it.
Sometimes they may even know some answers or have some valuable insights to things, but are restricted from discussing it due to NDA’s, some of which are sometimes indirectly related in a vague way. They’ve got a tough job…I have mad respect for them all though…it’s just best if you usually take the perspective that they are not Wyze employees and do not speak for or represent Wyze unless they are telling you specifically that someone from Wyze told them X, Y, or Z, or they are telling actually telling you something Wyze said. You will know when they are speaking for Wyze, or through Wyze. Otherwise they are sharing their extensive knowledge, experience and helpfulness as a long time community member who has proven to be responsible and have integrity during their time here with a good long history…it’s not really their job to join in on a conversation about speculation on TUTK, though I’m confident they’re not forbidden from posting their own musings if they cared to…they just have other stuff they’d rather spend their time talking about I’m betting. They also have widely different interests from each other outside of their mutual Wyze Hobby.
All I’m saying is, their participation or lack their of isn’t a sign of much of anything except that they feel they have nothing further productive to add to the conversation at the moment. That’s really all it means. I’ve sometimes asked some of them if they would refer certain topics up the to chain to Wyze and have been surprised to hear they already had. Sometimes Wyze responds, sometimes they don’t. Sometimes something is too trivial to send up the chain. I’ve come to trust their judgement as being pretty fair, and I know they often consult with each other over various decisions. They even have group channels just for the mods/mavens.
Anyway, Wyze may not want to talk about the specifics of what TUTK SDK version and options they have enabled or not…but since they’ve been doing so many AMA’s lately, if someone reminds me, I have no problem asking them in the next AMA. They answered at least half a dozen of my questions in the last AMA, even about stuff like Hualai. I’ll happily ask them about TUTK and WebRTC in the next one if you or someone will PM or callsign a reminder to me right around that time to remind me.